


How To Save A Life

by itsourparis



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Potential Triggers, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4759832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsourparis/pseuds/itsourparis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was being deliberately vague, but she knows him better than that. She remembers every single one of their talks; every single moment he spent crying in her arms. When he said she was the only one who understood him, he was right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Save A Life

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I did this. I guess I needed more of an excuse to cry over the poor tortured child that is Josh Washington. Enjoy ~

**_ HOW TO SAVE A LIFE _ **

**__ **

He’s making a scene again. There’s loud shouting from the classroom across the hall, and Samantha winces as she hears something heavy clashing to the floor, followed by the splintering sound of wood, the frantic ripping of paper and a professor’s horrified protesting. From the corridor a group of students crowd around the classroom door, pressing their noses against the window, eager for a peak inside; a cluster of gasping and gossiping naive teenagers, laughing and pointing at the so-called ‘psycho’ inside who, by the sound of it, continues to upturn furniture and shriek profanities in a room of panic-stricken 19 year olds. Suddenly the classroom door is flung open, and the nosey crowd of college students leap away from their position, shaken up in a state of panic as Joshua Washington storms out - dark eyes blazing, knuckles white and sharp jaw clenched so hard the veins in his neck pop ever so slightly. He may as well be foaming at the mouth and snarling.

He throws a pointed glare towards the remaining group of teens, which seems to scare the rest away, before turning on his heels and running down the corridor, disappearing from Sam’s eyesight. She sighs, leaning heavily against her open locker and gripping her books lighter to her chest as she watches the once calm and caring boy she thought she knew so well run away from his responsibilities, his cold reality; his sanity. On the inside of her locker hangs a polaroid of herself, Hannah and Beth at the beach two summers ago, with Josh’s face up-close to the frame as he took the shaky selfie. His eyes are soft and kind, his smile wide, and Sam can’t remember the last time she’d seen him that happy in months. Not since the _incident_ …

She places a book inside swiftly and slams the locker shut, closing her stinging eyes, biting her lip and shaking her head before walking away in the opposite direction to her next class.

 

* * *

 

It’s exactly a week later when Sam finds herself parked outside the Washington’s household - a large, upscale residence that worked well to display the family’s infinite wealth. It was hardly a surprise; both parents worked hard, heavy jobs with even heavier hours. Mrs Washington leaves the house as she climbs the steps to their front door. She, like Josh, looks worn and tired with anxiety, and considerably older-looking than Sam last remembers. She exhales quickly, like she’s suddenly relieved to see her.

“Oh thank God, Samantha.” Her words are frantic as she continues to her car, “You’re friends with Josh, right? D’you think that you could at least get him away from his room? Like, for at least half an hour, max. Okay? We’ve tried everything we can, Sam. We can’t handle his antics right now. I’ll be back in a few hours.” She settles into her car and turns the key in the ignition before leaning out the window, anxiously chewing her lip. “We think he maybe needs someone he can talk to his own age; someone who… wasn’t involved. Could you just do that for me?”

The blonde offers her a small smile. “I’ll do what I can.”

The house is strangely cold - desolate and empty without the presence of the sisters. Countless pictures line the walls displaying photos of smiling, happy children. She can only imagine the pain the family must feel to now stare up at the photos they once used to view with fondness and amusement. Sam stops to stare sadly at one of two young girls, no older than five, with little arms wrapped around the other in a clumsy, childish hug - a giggle on their lips and hope in their identical brown eyes. There’s a boy about a year older, his longer arms snuggly embracing the two from behind. A little boy with smiling green eyes and a lopsided, gap-toothed grin.

Sam runs a finger over the frame, frowning. _Josh._

She takes pity on the boy, and as she climbs the stairs she knows that this is what his sisters would have wanted. They wouldn’t want him left alone. She felt responsible, in a weird way. It’s what Hannah would have wanted.

“Josh?” She calls out, stood hesitantly outside his bedroom door, shifting nervously on her feet. His door is plastered with various video game and movie posters, and the odd flowery sticker her and Hannah would sneak onto his door as a joke when they were little. A moment passes and she’s unsure whether or not to knock, when suddenly the door is pulled open.

He looks awful.

“Sam- What the hell?” He frowns at her from the doorframe; eyes puffy and rimmed with red above noticeable dark circles, his cheeks hollow, and his lips dry and cracked. His hair is ruffled and his pyjamas are rugged, creased and stained, as if he’s been living only in them for the past week. He probably has. 

“Josh, Hi…” What does she say? She hadn’t really planned this though. “I- I wanted to see how you are. You haven’t been at college for a month.”

He stares at her feet and doesn’t answer. Sam sighs. “Can I come in?” 

Without lifting his eyes he holds the door open, letting her slip past him into the dark bedroom. It’s cold, like the rest of the house, and Sam subconsciously wraps her arms around herself, soothingly rubbing circles into her shoulders. The curtains are drawn, blocking out any kind of natural light, and his bed is severely unkempt.

“Why did you come? No one has bothered to come see me in weeks.”

“Where’s Chris?” 

He stares as her, and the sadness in his wide eyes breaks her heart. His voice is soft when he speaks; a sound that is almost a whisper comes from deep within his throat. “I don’t know.”

“Do… you want to talk about it?”

He drops his head to the floor once more, his lips now twisted slightly into a sneer. He’s shutting her off, closing into himself. “Listen Sam, I know better than to trust my so-called friends to actually care about what I think. I suggest you get done what you came here to do, because I really don’t need any more people pretending to understand what I’m feeling-”

Sam’s arms encircling his thin frame cut him off suddenly, pulling him close to her warm body, resting her head against his chest. Cold panic rises in his throat suddenly, and his first instinct is to run, to struggle and push her away - and he does, or at least attempts to - but her grasp is tight and her body is soft so he lets her finish; arms frozen to his sides, fists clenching, breath hitching.

Then she’s gone, and he’s alone again. Moving away, she drops her bag on the foot of the bed and pulls out a battered DVD and a large bag of popcorn. Josh raises an eyebrow.

“I thought we could watch a movie.”

It’s some awful horror movie from the 80’s, with awful acting and equally awful special effects. Sam bought it thinking that they might just have a laugh at its expense, but Josh is instantly enthralled by it - utterly captured by the action onscreen. His sad eyes are lit up and alert now, his lips parted and, eventually, Sam spots the slightest upturn tease the corners of his mouth.

An hour and a half into the movie, Sam holds her breath as Josh lifts his first piece of popcorn to his lips and, very slowly, begins to chew.

_Well, it’s a start._

 

* * *

 

Movie night becomes a tradition. She visits him most nights, ordering him food when he forgets to eat, reminding him to take his newly prescribed meds by bringing him up a glass of cold water and a box to organise them in. She tidies after his many rants and awesome rages, and proves as the voice of reason whenever he, rarely, opens up to and tells her the deepest, darkest secrets of his tortured mind. Sometimes he mentions suicide, of how sometimes much he wishes to jump, to end the suffering, to escape the world.

He asks her if she’s ever felt like dying - asks her if she knows what that feels like, to want to die, and she doesn’t know what to say. He’s staring at her with damp eyes, so she squeezes him tightly and presses her face into his neck. What do you say to someone who already knows the answer?

She becomes his shoulder to cry on, his strong foundation; his rock.

_The only one who understood him._

She and Chris come and play cards with him one afternoon, and they eat Chinese food together cross-legged on Josh’s bedroom floor, listening to alternative rock and laughing. Chris had hugged him tight when he’d first seen him, the blond pressing his face into his friend’s neck to conceal his tearful eyes.

“What have you done to yourself, Cochise?” Hearing his friend’s childhood nickname directed back at him brings tears to Josh’s eyes, and he remembers what it was it was like to have a best friend again - two best friends that would care enough to spend their spare time teasing a smile onto his lips and hope into his heart.

Just for a moment, he forgets his sorry, depressed state, and remembers what it’s like to _live_.

Phoning her late at night becomes a regularity. That evening she could’ve left him content as could be - they’d have hugged each other goodbye and he might have even given her a tiny kiss on the cheek. Now he’s ringing her up, sobbing down the phone and most likely a hunched up mess on his bedroom floor, cowering in a corner and hugging his knees close to his chest; alone and frightened, tormented by the words of his own conscience.

“They’re b-back. Beth an- and Hannah… They’re back, again, Sammy- what do I do, I don’t know what to do they want me dead, I know they do, I didn’t save them because I didn’t do anything- I could’ve done something but I didn’t. I didn’t. I was so fucking stupid, stupid, stupid- stupid Josh! Stupid Josh- I deserve to go with them Sam. I deserve to die don’t I? Sam? Maybe I should. M-maybe I should and then maybe they’d leave me alone…”

Sam tells him to stay calm and take deep breaths - to remember the breathing techniques she’d taught him – and that she’s coming over. It’s half one in the morning, and once again his parents are away at the cabin. She makes her way up to his room and finds him flat out on his bed, shaking with sweat pouring down his forehead and fingers knotted into the sheets. He’s asleep, but looks anything but peaceful. She settles down on the sheets next to him, pressing her body into his and wrapping her arms around his middle, hugging him to her. After a while his trembling ceases and his breathing regulates, and she smiles, content, before falling asleep with her face pressed flush against his side.

 

* * *

 

She kisses him once. They’re in his room, sitting on his bed in the dark, ignoring the terrible action movie left paused and forgotten on the TV, and she’s curious. She had put the movie on as another desperate attempt to distract his mind. It works sometimes. Not this time.

His eyes are distant, physically fixated on the frozen TV screen but mentally so far away from the room that Sam’s afraid one day she might just loose him completely. Silent tears run from his red, puffy eyes and down his face, over parted lips, bleeding into the fabric of his shirt. He looks so incredibly sad, lonely, and at such a _complete loss_ , that Sam honestly doesn’t know else to do. She feels helpless. She doesn’t know what else she can possibly say to make him feel better.

So she kisses him better, inching close to plant her lips over every inch if his hollow, tear-stained face. She cups his jaw gently, and his eyelids flutter closed as she traces over them; pressing kisses on each delicate area of skin, on the tip of his nose, across both rough, unshaven cheeks. He doesn’t move or flinch away like he would have a month ago. He just breathes out softly from his mouth and lets her cover him with affection, clutching his fingers into the fabric of Sam’s sleeves.

“I wish I could do more for you.” She whispers, after returning to grace his lips with tiny kisses.

Responding for the first time, he opens his mouth and kisses her back, over and over again, with a familiar passion Sam never thought she’d see again. “Sammy,” he pulls away momentarily, breathless, and presses his forehead to hers. Nose to nose. Eye to eye. Heart to heart. “You’ve done more than you will ever know.”

 

* * *

Making her way up the Washington’s staircase for the third time in a week, Sam can hear the trickle of running water sounding from Josh’s en-suit bedroom.

_Good,_ she grins triumphantly, beginning to ascend the stairs a little faster out of impulse, _he’s finally beginning to look after himself. He must be improving._

Once again standing outside Josh’s bedroom door, Sam stops and debates knocking and calling his name like she has always done. They’ve grown quite close in the last few weeks and months that they’d spent together. He no longer flinches away from her touch, or protests at her anxious fussing about his well-being. She stays the night sometimes, he hugs her without hesitation, and they’ve kissed each other more than once. We’re they together? Was he her boyfriend? Not really, she doesn’t think, but she figures that sitting about his room while he’s in the shower would not be that much of a big deal. 

She turns the handle with confidence, pushing open the door and switching the on light switch like it’s second nature.

Someone shouts, and Sam turns to the door of Josh’s bathroom in time to see the young man stare at her with wide, wild eyes. There’s a grey towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still damp and dark from the shower. And when her eyes scan his naked torso, the smile instantly dies on her lips.

Her breath hitches in her throat at the sight of the scars, and it feels like the air has been knocked out of her lungs. There are scars starting from his upper arms that continue to decorate his torso with countless slashes of pink-tinted, delicate skin. Sam suddenly feels very sick.

Josh yells something incoherent that she can’t make out, and stumbles back into the bathroom in a wild panic, clutching his towel closely to his body. Sam hears him whimper “no” over and over again as his sinks helplessly onto the tiles. His voice is horribly hoarse when he finally chokes. “Oh shit… Don’t look at me! _Please_ … don’t look at me.” 

“Josh-“ Sam approaches him slowly, cautiously; heart beating so fast she can feel it through her fingers. “Oh Josh…” She doesn’t know what to say. She has absolutely no idea.

The blonde freezes instinctively as he glares up at her through the crack in the door - her entire body flinching when he erupts suddenly, yelling at her whilst choking on the sobs that seem to spill uncontrollably from his lips.

“Why did you do it, Sam? D- Did you really want to see - this? _Is that it_?” He’s climbing to wobble on shaky feet, his accusing eyes never leaving hers. They’re red and so _wide,_ and the pure betrayal that she see’s there hits her like a ton of bricks. Advancing on her, he towers over the blonde’s small height. “ _Is this what you wanted to see!?_ Well, _fine then_!! Feast your eyes on my shitty excuse for a body – _I hate it. I hate that I hate it.”_ He backs away, tripping over his feet, horror in his eyes. “And you- oh God. You hate it- you hate it too, Sammy. Do you hate me, Sammy? Because you should. And-  and I should… I _should.”_ He drags his fingernails heavily down the length of his chest and continues to mutter incoherent nonsense - like a mad man, _like a sick man_.

Sam chokes out a breath, unable to take her eyes of him. She’s so completely taken aback, so completely unprepared for the onslaught of profanities and accusations she’s about to witness. She inhales slowly.

“Listen, Josh, I get it. I understand that this… If this is- if this is a cry for help-” 

“Why did you want her to die??” He’s screaming at her now, cowering in the farthest corner of the room like a wounded animal. “Hannah. B-beth…Y-you could have- have done something… Why Sam… the _fuck_ did you let them die?!”

He’s just angry and embarrassed, Sam knows, but the fact does little to suppress the sharp hurt that his words cause. She stares at him incredulously, trying desperately to hold in the tears that he’d already let fall, and inhales shakily. Her eyes sting and all she can see is the blurry shape of a delusional, broken boy sobbing into his knees, rocking back and forth softly whilst trembling fingers dig into the soft fabric of the towel. She bites her lip and clenches her jaw, backing away and suddenly wanting to be as far away from the dark, dingy bedroom as physically possible.

“You need help, Josh.” She throws him one last regretful look of sympathy before darting from the room. He doesn’t look up at her when she leaves. He doesn’t do _anything._

_And good,_ she thinks; _thank God that the tears haven’t fallen._ Her own weakness is the last thing she wants to deal with right now.

 

* * *

 She doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing. She doesn’t know why she agreed to it. She doesn’t know why Chris couldn’t just deliver the work himself. Of course, she remembers, he’s busy going to see a movie with Ashley. _Not a date,_ he’d clarified. She’d punched his arm.

Now Sam was left with the duty to deliver some specific college work to the one person she’d been avoiding for a week - Josh. She didn’t ask what it was – Chris had just thrust it into her hands, promising that he owed her one. Sifting through the physics papers that meant absolutely nothing to her, she shook her head. _Like Josh was ever going to touch these papers anyway._

She feels sick to be back, the house just as empty, cold and unwelcoming as ever, and she just can’t bring herself to look into the bright eyes and smiling faces of the happy infants on the walls. She isn’t even remotely surprised to discover that Josh’s parents are, again, nowhere to be seen. She doesn’t remember the last time that she even saw them.

Hesitating outside the bedroom she had fled a mere few days ago, Sam swallows heavily. All she had to do was drop off the work and be done with it. No talking, no crying, no nothing. She could do this. So she knocks slowly and clearly. “Josh?”

_Don’t do this to me buddy._

She knocks again, louder and longer this time, and when she is once again left in silence she chews her lip anxiously. _He never leaves the house._ Sam rattles the handle, surprised when she realises that the door was never actually closed. “Josh? …I’m coming in, okay?”

But the room is empty, quiet, and she knows straight away that no one is there. Placing the papers onto Josh’s cluttered bedside table, her eye catches something through the crack in the bathroom door. She thinks she see’s something on the floor. Somebody.

She knows straight away that it’s an overdose. She bursts in to find him collapsed on the bathroom tiles, huddled into a ball against the toilet seat; a small pot that had once held pills left abandoned at his feet. There’s blood oozing slowly from a self-inflicted cut that spread from his wrist to the crook of his elbow, painting the white tiles, the white walls, and the white toilet seat a terrible, terrible crimson shade. Time is too short to scream or cry, so with trembling fingers Sam’s dials for an ambulance, her voice shaking and breaking as she explains the situation.

The man on the other end is kind, and tells her to stay strong, that they are on their way. Sam was strong. She had to be strong.

An hour later, she sits in a waiting room that smells of antiseptic and sickness as her friend has his stomach pumped over and over again, the cut on his arm cleaned and bandaged. She squeezes his fingers while he lies unconscious in a hospital bed, and she never, ever wants to let him go again.

Sam stays with him until the next afternoon when he’s admitted from hospital with a new set of meds and a clean bandage. She tucks him into his bed and makes him promise never to do it again, that things can get better, if he’ll let them; that’s she’s here for him and she always will be.

“You have to promise me, Josh.” She’s crouched by his bedside, holding his fingers to her lips. He lies on his side, staring at her through tired, hooded eyes. “I can do all I can, but you have to help yourself.”

Josh lifts his hand from her grasp, trailing the pads of his fingers down Sam’s cheek. “Sammy…” He whispers, voice low. “Always so perfect. Always… exactly what I need.”

Sighing softly, Sam leans in to press her lips softly against his, realising how much she’d missed it. Missed him. He entwines his fingers into the blonde strands that fall from her untidy bun, humming against her skin. She presses a kiss to his cheek before leaning back on her knees, “I know it’s hard, but promise me, Josh, that you’ll wait it out until I come back in the morning.”

He’s quiet as he gazes up at her, his eyes distant. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

It’s half six when she’s finally sat in her car on the driveway. The sun is just beginning to go down, casting a reddish glow over the streets, and a group of children play innocently in the street around her. In the silence, Sam hunches over and rests her head heavy against the steering wheel; finally letting the tears fall for the boy who she realises, now, that she loves.

 

* * *

 

It’s her vibrating phone that jolts Sam awake at half one the next morning. She grabs the device from the nightstand, rubbing her eyes and frowning when she see’s that it’s Chris. _What?_  

“Chris?” She hisses, “What the hell are you playing at? It’s the middle of the night-“

Chris’s insistent panicking cuts her off, as he tells her that Josh hasn’t been answering any of his calls or texts.

“He’s probably just asleep, Chris,” She chews her lip, not fully believing her own words. “He was… He was fine when I left him earlier.”

“I just feel like something could be up, Sam. I just don’t feel right about this one.” He sounds so defeated, and Sam sighs and runs a hand over her tired eyes.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in fifteen.” She hangs up and dresses quickly, grabs her keys as she sneaks out the house.

When they meet, the front door isn’t locked and the house is deathly quiet. Together they ascend the stairs to Josh’s room, warning settling in at the open bedroom door. When Sam finds the scrapped, scrawled note resting on the middle of the bed, she knows, and her heart plummets.

 

“Don’t miss me. I found my escape.”

 

_Oh no, dear God no, no, no, no, no, **please no**._

She pushes past Chris, his eyes wide and just as panic stricken as she. She knows – she hopes - just where he might be.

“Just follow me, okay. I’ll go on ahead.” She’s praying that she’s right, praying that she’s not too late. He was being deliberately vague, but she knows him better than that. She remembers every single one of their talks; every single moment he spent crying in her arms.

When he said she was _the only one who understood him,_ he was right.

It takes Sam a little over ten minutes to reach the viaduct, the bridge completely desolate in the cold, early hours of the morning. When she spots a dark figure perched on the edge, dressed clad in a black hoodie and pyjama bottoms, her heart skips a beat. “Josh…" 

He’s so close to the edge. He could jump right now, he could fly - have his moment of freedom, and that that would be it. Eternal darkness. Peace. He’s not sure. He hopes. His toes skim the edge of the crumbling concrete; his fingers tremble at his side. Is she coming? _So close now._ She isn’t coming. _Not long now._ His eyes-lids flutter shut. _It’s time._

He means to step forward, but he’s being pulled back suddenly, back into to the realm of reality. The arms around his middle are small but strong, and they yank him from the edge and back down onto the cool concrete, hugging his body into close to theirs.

_Sam._ At first he’s too numb, too shocked to comprehend, until the devastating harsh truth of the situation comes crashing down. All he can do is choke out repeated muffled, erratic sobs, of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry,” as he breaks down in Sam’s gentle embrace.

She cries into his back, soothingly stroking his hair. She presses countless kisses behind his ear, whispering. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Josh, I got you. `You’re safe. I got you.”

Chris soon approaches the couple, wrapping his large arms around the two in one huge, safe, loving embrace. Neither of them ever wants to let the other go ever again.

_This is where it ends,_ Sam silently vows to herself while listening to Josh’s erratic breathing beating against her heart; a connection. _She will never, ever let things get this bad again._


End file.
